Engrish Rives!

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Engrish Rives!


Sometimes I just can't help myself. Taken from a screencap at GT (obviously), the new Eureka Seven PS2 game is either abusing or is part of the phenomenon. You never know anymore.

[Ironwood]

It's inevitabre.

Things are inevitabrey going to change.

[CadetUmfer]

So...looks like someone remade TrickStyle?

[Strazos]

Durr...what is GT?

[schild]

Durr...what is GT?

Gametrailers.

[Strazos]

Ah, right-o.

[Resvrgam]

I never quite grasped why the Japanese transpose their L's and R's.  You'd think since these people are porting their products for an English-speaking demographic, they'd invest a little more effort  (see: any effort) into translating their products a little better for said customer-base. 
Though I suppose the current baka-gaijin ("stupid foreigner" - a favoured term I've seen many Japanese refer to American tourists as) trend to feverishly devour all sorts of excrement from Japan makes this point rather moot.   If it's got flashy colours, doe-eyed bimbos equipped with huge cans and makes absolutely no sense -- it's a hit in the U.S so the perversion of the language ensues unabated. 

Note to the Japanese: Americans don't need help anally-raping the English language, they have enuff a'dat azz-izz, dog! Know what I'm sayin' G?

Whatever the case: Boku wa kichiku beihei! Eta Nihon!

 

[Samwise]

I never quite grasped why the Japanese transpose their L's and R's.

Because L's and R's are both "liquid" phonemes -- that is, they're both produced by pushing air along the sides of the tongue.  In Japanese there is only one liquid phoneme, which is R.  Hence, some native Japanese speakers will try to make an "L" sound and come up with an "R", since that's the closest phoneme that exists in Japanese.

[Murgos]

Durr...what is GT?

Gametrairers.

FIFY.

[Cyrrex]

I never quite grasped why the Japanese transpose their L's and R's.

Because L's and R's are both "liquid" phonemes -- that is, they're both produced by pushing air along the sides of the tongue.  In Japanese there is only one liquid phoneme, which is R.  Hence, some native Japanese speakers will try to make an "L" sound and come up with an "R", since that's the closest phoneme that exists in Japanese.

That's actually really interesting...but I can't help but think that it doesn't provide the whole explanation.  I live in Denmark, and have essentially become fluent in the spoken language.  Some of their vowel sounds are BRUTALLY hard (for an American, at least) to sound out, probably for very similar reasons as you describe above.

But that problem is almost completely unrelated to my ability to properly spell the words that I have difficulty pronouncing.  In fact, I dare say that my struggle in sounding them out correctly actually enhances my ability to spell them correctly.

[Strazos]

The iconographic alphabets may also have something to do with it...

[Yegolev]

But that problem is almost completely unrelated to my ability to properly spell the words that I have difficulty pronouncing.  In fact, I dare say that my struggle in sounding them out correctly actually enhances my ability to spell them correctly.

I feel that the basic answer is simply cheap and lazy translators.  I also expect you get different results depending on what the native language of the translator is, since I can often spot a simple "that should be L" situation.  I wish I could come up with a recent example I saw, but I just can't remember it.

To my ears, however, the JP R sounds somewhere between L and R, so if you don't understand the context you might go either way.  Interestingly, the Pimsleur CD has you pronouncing D in a word like "wakari" so it is more like "wakadi".

[Samwise]

I think the Japanese R is rolled a bit; I was actually going to mention the rolled R as an example of a phoneme that English speakers commonly have trouble with.  I myself can't roll an R properly and usually fudge it by saying something that sounds a lot like a D.

[Trippy]

I think the Japanese R is rolled a bit; I was actually going to mention the rolled R as an example of a phoneme that English speakers commonly have trouble with.  I myself can't roll an R properly and usually fudge it by saying something that sounds a lot like a D.

Yes, I remember all the debates on Usenet about how to pronounce "Ryu" from SF II.

Edit: spelling for teh win!

[Zar]

Because L's and R's are both "liquid" phonemes -- that is, they're both produced by pushing air along the sides of the tongue.  In Japanese there is only one liquid phoneme, which is R.  Hence, some native Japanese speakers will try to make an "L" sound and come up with an "R", since that's the closest phoneme that exists in Japanese.

That's correct.  Being a reformed linguistics major, this was the stuff we spent our first semester on.  Basically, any given language only uses a certain subset of the total sounds that the human mouth can produce.  In Japan, there is no "L" sound as we have in English.  The closest they have is the phoneme R (which, as noted above, is not exactly the same as our r.  They actually have different symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet, but I don't know how to make my keyboard spit them out), which is also a a liquid phoneme.  So L's become R's.  In fact, our [r] is a relatively rare phoneme in the languages of the world.  It's possible to train yourself to learn to use a sound not used in your native language, but it can be quite difficult, as phonemes become fairly permanently set in our minds at a very young age.  Interestingly, babies do not have this restriction at birth.  When they first begin babbling, cooing, etc., they are essentially taking their vocal tract out for a spin -- seeing what it can do.  However, within a couple years the sounds become restricted to those  used in the  language (or languages, in a multilingual household) they are exposed to.  It's difficult to overcome this initial hardwiring of our brains, but it can sometimes be done.  The two main factors in this process are the age at which you attempt to learn the new sounds, and your motivation for doing so.  Also, some people just seem to be intrinsically better at it than others.

There are also dozens of sounds used in other languages not used in English.  For example, German has the voiceless velar fricative {x} (not to be confused with our letter x -- {x} is the international phonetic symbol for this sound), where you shunt air through a tight space near your velum.  It kind of sounds like your choking.  This is the sound that is at the end of the word Bach, in German, for example.  However, as we do not have this sound in our English repetoire, we replace it with the closest thing we do have, the voiceless velar stop [k] (this basically does correspond to our letter k).  So that's how you get the Bach you hear in English.

Err. yeah.  Basically Samwise was right, and I reminded myself why I switched majors.

[Sky]

I'm a pretty good mimic and can do a few language tricks. I think it's because I was always keeping my ears open when I was a kid. I was just saying to a coworker that it'd be cool to do an old Howlin' Wolf song in Wolf's voice. But I took german in high school and could emulate native sounds pretty well, even if my teacher had to keep asking me to stop barking like an SS officer. I can roll r's pretty well...but I can also purr like a cat ;) I can also do subsaharan glottal stops and clicks! Of course, practicing these things always draws some odd looks, and some days I'll get 'stuck' on an accent which can get really odd, heh. It's the basis of my musical ear, as well. The ear for hearing chord quality is kinda like hearing subtle lingual differences.

It's more than just the act of speaking, kids lose the ability to hear some subtleties of language that they aren't constantly exposed to, as Zar points out. I just saw a great documentary on that, where they were playing two vowels for people, and a lot of them sounded the same, but native speakers could easily identify them. Cool stuff.

[Strazos]

Heh...if Bach is not really {Bah-K}....then I have no idea how to really say it.

Also, I can fake French and Italian alright....I can say what I read (generally), but I have no idea what I am actually reading/saying most of the time.


I really wish I was better with languages. 

[Samwise]

That's correct.  Being a reformed linguistics major, this was the stuff we spent our first semester on.

I never got further than the first semester, but that's still enough to make one look like an expert now and then.  Random electives ftw!   :-D

[Signe]

My nephew stuck it out and now lives in Japan and teaches Chinese to white folk.  Figure that one out.

[Hoax]

If you were my aunt I would move to China too?

[Sky]

[Signe]

If you were my aunt I would move to China too?

That is a terrible thing to say!      I AM A WONDERFUL AUNT! 

I don't know why you think I'm mean.  I'm not.

[Alkiera]

I'm a pretty good mimic and can do a few language tricks. I think it's because I was always keeping my ears open when I was a kid. I was just saying to a coworker that it'd be cool to do an old Howlin' Wolf song in Wolf's voice. But I took german in high school and could emulate native sounds pretty well, even if my teacher had to keep asking me to stop barking like an SS officer. I can roll r's pretty well...but I can also purr like a cat ;) I can also do subsaharan glottal stops and clicks! Of course, practicing these things always draws some odd looks, and some days I'll get 'stuck' on an accent which can get really odd, heh. It's the basis of my musical ear, as well. The ear for hearing chord quality is kinda like hearing subtle lingual differences.

It's more than just the act of speaking, kids lose the ability to hear some subtleties of language that they aren't constantly exposed to, as Zar points out. I just saw a great documentary on that, where they were playing two vowels for people, and a lot of them sounded the same, but native speakers could easily identify them. Cool stuff.

I can do most of this too.  I have no problem with that german 'ch' sound, or with rolling 'r' in either the french or spanish way.  I begin to wish I'd applied myself more in the language classes I'd taken, there's plenty to be made translating, probably more than being a data analyst/programmer.

As far as the different phonemes go, I'd read somewhere that if you learn(or are at least exposed to) english and chinese at a young age, you get the vast majority of the human phonemes, as the two languages have many that are not in the other one.  Probably why it's so hard to understand people from the orient in general.

--
Alkiera

[Zar]

Heh...if Bach is not really {Bah-K}....then I have no idea how to really say it.

This has been commented on (somewhat indirectly), but not only do kids stop using sounds not utilized in their native language at a young age, but they also become relatively unable to discriminate between a sound that IS used in their language and another sound that is very close, but is not used.  Their brain is not trained to recognize the distinction between the two sounds as a meaningful difference, as there is none, for their native language.  So the close-but-not-quite-right-sound is lumped in with the one they do know and recognize. 

The only difference between the {x} used in german and the {k} is that with the {x}. you allow a small stream of air to pass between your tongue and velum, and with the {k} you do not.  Make the {k} sound but allow for a small space between your tongue and the roof of your mouth, and you have {x}.  They sound very similar, and to an English-speaking American whose brain has not been trained to recognize the distinction, it can sound identical.  Native German speakers do however note the distinction.  Using the {k} marks you as having an accent.  This whole discussion is the primary reason behind accents of non-native language speakers, in fact.  But I've babbled and bored enough. Adieu.

[Strazos]

Yeah, I suppose it's sort of hard to tell what is meant when we're communicating in text, rather than actually hearing the sounds.